Number of the Month

May 2002

Memories of our cocktails of numbers last year
in January and December
from The Times, 4th May:

Victim
of £25m health ministry fiascoBy Nigel Hawkes, Health Editor

U-turn over vCJD surgery precautions

THE hasty introduction of
disposable surgical instruments to combat the human form of “mad
cow” disease has turned into a fiasco that has killed two
patients and injured hundreds of others.

Doctors in England have been told to stop using the throwaway
forceps after officials admitted that patient safety was
compromised, yet the instruments are still being used routinely in
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland........

What the story does not mention is the thousands victims who had their
operations cancelled or delayed because the money was spent on this fiasco.

Apologies for being repetitive, but as said last month about fly sprays
"This is such an illustrative example; advice from a committee of self
appointed experts, action by ministerial decree, with no debate and no
appeal". It is also illustrative of much of today's legislation.
Politicians shoot from the hip and put together shoddy, ill thought out acts and
decrees, then wonder why things go wrong.

Even more remarkable is the insouciance of the man responsible for all this
suffering and death. From the inside pages of the same edition:

THE Government’s chief adviser on vCJD has admitted that he would be happy
to have his tonsils out with the traditional surgical equipment.

Peter Smith told The Times he was satisfied that the risk of
catching vCJD from the instruments was negligible compared with the benefits
of the surgery.

Professor Smith’s admission raises the question as to why ministers
banned traditional equipment in the first place and spent £25 million on
cheap disposable instruments that have been linked to two deaths and scores of
injuries. It also suggests that there is no need for the continued use of the
equipment in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Professor Smith, chairman of the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory
Committee (Seac), said yesterday: “It is a theoretical risk (of catching
vCJD) and there has been no transmission by this route so far, so my guess is
that (were it medically necessary) I would go ahead and have it done.”.............

Here's another story they won't tell you. Remember all the fuss about the
Nenana Ice Classic last November? Well you
are not supposed to. The Global Warmers will drop this proxy like a hot brick
after the Tanana River officially
went out on May 7th, 2002 at 9:27 p.m. What a strange thing to happen after
what CRU declared to be the record high first quarter for global
temperature! Miceal O'Ronain has been keeping Number Watch up to
date on this matter since he first predicted that the classic would be late on
March 30th.

ROME
- Italy, which saw an unexpected surge in electiricty demand last winter,
could face power shortages if new generating plants are not built soon,
the head of the national grid said.

"Peak
electricity consumption shot up to a new high last winter and new plants
are needed to cope with the rising demand," Pier Luigi Parcu of the
Gestore Rete Trasmissione Nazionale (GRTN) told a conference.

Electricity demand in Italy is growing at about three percent a year.

But peak demand last winter rose to about 52,000 MW compared with
49,000 MW the previous year, leaving a margin of 2,700 MW of spare
generating capacity.

"We were surprised by this increase, it was bigger than we
expected," he said, adding it was caused by an unusually cold winter.

It has certainly been a strange "record warm winter".

State of the Nation

The numbers tell it all - rising violent crime, a shambolic transport system,
by far the worst health service in the civilised world, ever rising taxes,
constitutional government in shreds etc. Never fear, the British Government is
imposing a clampdown.

On what are they clamping down? Wait for it. Compost Heaps!

The press took a largely satirical view. The piece by Jane Owen in The
Times (May 6) Beware: steaming heaps ahead was particularly
enjoyable. It comes to something when even the press notice that the Government
is simply absurd. Unfortunately, no numbers have been given, so we do not know
the dangers compost heaps pose to life and limb.

This all poses a new dilemma. It was easy enough hiding our T-bone steaks and
Roseclear. We now even have new stashes of fly spray. But how do you hide a
compost heap?

The story also goes to show what happens when government is exercised by
diktat and not debate. One part of the Government is imposing draconian fines on
composting and another part is trying to encourage it as a fine example of
recycling.

Talking about recycling, here's a nice one from The Times ( May 6)

The science of sacking

Judge not, that ye be not judged
Matthew 7,1

Note for American readers: this piece is about soccer and
the people mentioned are incredibly important.

Top football clubs given the formula
for successBy Mark Henderson, Science Correspondent

PREMIERSHIP football club chairman have
been handed the ultimate formula for football success: a
mathematical equation that decides once and for all when they
should sack a failing manager.

The job prospects of Arsène Wenger, Alex Ferguson and David
O’Leary could soon depend on the calculation perf(m)=0.121(result(m))+0.879(perf(m-1)),
should their bosses take the advice of a Cambridge University
mathematician.

The formula for the sack, devised by Chris Hope of the Judge
Institute of Management, balances a manager’s results against
the costs and benefits that would be involved in dismissing him.
It shows that John Gregory should have been sacked by Aston Villa
in December 1999 (he resigned this January), and that Everton
should have fired Walter Smith in April 1999 rather than allowing
him to struggle on until March this year.

Other managers, however, have been treated most unjustly,
according to the model: neither Ruud Gullit nor Gianluca Vialli
ought to have been dismissed at Chelsea, and Joe Royle was also
unfortunate to lose the Everton job.

Dr Hope’s equation holds that after an initial honeymoon
period of just eight games, a manager should automatically be
sacked if his average of points per game, weighted to favour
recent results, sinks below a figure of 0.74.

Over a ten-year period, clubs that adopt this approach would
get an average of 56.8 points per season, compared to the current
Premiership average of 51.8. Job turnover, however, would increase
dramatically: each club would employ an average of 5.7 managers
every 10 years, compared to the present average of 4.5.

In the formula set out above, perf(m), or the rating after m
number of matches, is the crucial figure, the “trapdoor” that
opens below 0.74 points. Result(m) is the number of points scored
in the most recent match, and perf(m-1) is the accumulated perf(m)
score after the previous match. The figures of 0.121 and 0.879 are
the “smoothing” scores added by Dr Hope to give weight to
recent results. They mean that the past five games account for
about 50 per cent of the rating.

Dr Hope used a computer model to work out the combination of
values for the trapdoor, the honeymoon period and the smoothing
factor that would result in the best average results over a
sustained period. “The optimal strategy for a club would seem to
be to allow a manager a honeymoon period of eight games, and then
sack him if his weighted performance with a smoothing value of
0.121 (putting 47 per cent of the weight on the last five games)
falls below 0.74 points per game,” he said.

This strategy protects against kicking out excellent managers
with good track records because of a bad run of form, and against
allowing a poor coach to stay in charge for too long.

“The trapdoor value seems generous — an average of 0.74
points would normally see the team relegated — but. . .if you
set it too much higher, you end up sacking too many Alex Fergusons
because of bad runs.”

Wow, that looks really scientific! And coefficients to three decimal places! This new formula, which looks so impressive to the ordinary punter, is
in fact old hat. It is known by various names, depending on your discipline:
exponentially weighted mean, leaky integrator, single-pole low-pass filter etc.
Here is a version of it as described by your bending author:

That was in a book called Laboratory On-line Computing published in
1975 and it was old hat even then. So what is the good doctor's contribution to
the sum of human knowledge? He has chosen the single parameter, the response time, which he
has set at 7.75 matches, and also a threshold for the weighted average at 0.74
points per game.

Your bending author, being a simple engineer, would test such a process with
a basic test pattern ( the step). Assume that a team lost the final eleven matches having won all the previous ones. It does not need a computer to
establish that there would be two consequences:

(a) they would probably win the championship

(b) they would sack their manager.

Alternatively, if they won every third match but lost the rest they would

(a) be relegated

(b) keep their manager.

Time was when the term Cambridge Mathematician really meant something and a
Science Correspondent could do a simple calculation to check his story, but
then they would have better things to occupy their time.

Storm in a tea cup?

Should
I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
T S Eliot; The love song of J Alfred Prufrock

Epidemiologists get so
wrapped up in their own particular bandwagon that they do not realise that they
are rocking the boat for their colleagues (well, why should they have a monopoly
on mixing metaphors?). A piece heralded by the BBC
(Heart attack victims 'should drink tea') was
the usual mishmash of marginal
statistics. The Trojan
Number in the study by Dr Kenneth Mukamal and colleague's at the Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Centre in Boston, US, was 1,900 people, mainly in their 60s,
who had suffered a heart attack. A quaint BBC slant on this story was the
introduction “Research by doctors in Israel found heavy drinkers -
those who drank more than 14 cups of tea a week - had a 44% lower death rate
than non-tea drinkers in the three and a half years following their heart
attacks. Moderate tea drinkers - those who consumed less than 15 cups a week -
had a 28% lower rate of dying over the same period”

By the time they had
counted the deaths four years later, the Trojan Number had dwindled to 313. We
may deduce that the numbers in each category were respectively 77, 99 and 137.
Good enough for epidemiology.

But what are we to make
of the follow up comment?There was
little difference between patients in terms of education, income, and their
exercise, smoking and drinking habits, which could generally be responsible for
variations in mortality rates.

Heavens to Betsy, as the Junkman might say, are they
telling us that the demons of the health establishment are insignificant after
all? Either that or they are telling us that they happened upon a group of
patients with remarkably consistent attitudes towards the naughty things in
life.

The researchers believe that antioxidants, known as
flavonoids, could be responsible.

Just so we don’t get the wrong idea, the BBC adds a quote
from its own source:

Belinda Linden, head of medical information at the British
Heart Foundation, said healthier lifestyles were key to avoiding heart disease.

She said: "The BHF recommends lifestyle changes to
reduce the risk of heart disease. Including flavonoids in your diet is just one
step in the right direction.

"Giving up smoking, taking more exercise and adopting
a healthy lifestyle should be a priority."

If you look up the BBC link you will also discover that tea
may protect against Parkinsons, could prevent cancer and appears
to improve the function of artery walls.

TCEFFE DNA ESUAC

Drinkers
earn more, says professor was a headline picked up by much of the media.
There is a positive correlation between drinking and income, which is treated as
a causal mystery. Why should drinking improve your earning capacity? There is no
mystery. The purpose of much of taxation is to remove temptations from the
lower classes. In the UK taxes are used to ensure, for example, that the
inferior classes do not clog up the roads. What kind of ivory tower do some of
these professors live in? Have they never heard of Hogarth and Gin Lane
"Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence"? The poor, given the
chance, take to drink like a duck to the proverbial. That was why the Gin Act of
1736 was implemented.

There is a nice little coda to the Yahoo story:

The economics don has just been given more funding to research the
alcohol/earnings link.

But Professor Auld warned that the findings should not be used as an excuse
to drink your way up the career ladder.

How rarely is (presumable) intelligence accompanied by
common sense.

Clots

“Scientists” in Birmingham have come up with a new
slant on Trojan
Numbers. It is the number of questionnaires sent out to
frequent business fliers, 1000. It was all
about in-flight risks of DVT, which, as we have
seen, are the same as the risks anywhere else. The number of responses was
120. Now, by this stage, most of us ordinary faint-hearted folk would already
have given up for fear of eliciting such headlines as 88% of business
travellers can spot a load of old cobblers when they see one. Not our
heroes, however, who pressed on regardless. Only nine business travellers took
no precautions against DVT with 80% (why can’t they just say 96?) taking
precautions such as stretching their legs, taking aspirin and drinking more
water. The one precaution most of them failed to take was cutting down on
alcohol.

Hang on a minute! Haven’t we been frequently told that
alcohol reduces the probability of blood clots (see here
for example)? So, not only are they being asked about precautions for an at best
theoretical risk, they are being asked if they avoid a palliative.

Hold on to what we have so far.

1. A questionnaire was issued
and attracted a derisory 12% response.

2. As far as we are told none of
the respondents suffered from any disease whatever and no disease was studied.

3. They were asked what
precautions they took against a risk that was purely theoretical.

4. Particular emphasis is given
to the precaution of avoiding an agent that would probably reduce the risk, if
it exists.

What could a reporter and sub-editor make of such vacuous
material? Fear not! Sheer professionalism will prevail, as we see in The
Times Business Travel Section, May 16th:

DVT study calls for
an end to in-flight alcoholBy Steve Keenan

THE
first study into deep vein thrombosis (DVT) to be done among regular
business flyers has recommended that alcohol be banned on
flights.

Although the vast majority of passengers are now aware of
the risks of developing thrombosis and consequently take more
onboard exercise, one in four still refuses to cut down on drinking,
says the survey, carried out by Birmingham University.

The report recommends that airlines should at least limit
alcohol intake if a complete ban is not introduced, a possibility
that is increasingly gaining credibility.

In a separate development this week, the World Health
Organisation (WHO) also announced that it is to study alcohol
consumption as part of wide-ranging research into DVT and its
causes.

This is what now passes for research in Britain’s
nationalised universities. Any school kid could send out a questionnaire and
group the results (many do). Let us hope that most of them would have more
commonsense than to headline a result that isn’t there. All we have is a few
anecdotes about people’s in flight habits (well, 12% of them anyway) in
response to a media scare that so far has yielded no substance. The anti-alcohol
lobby is just part of the wave of political correctness that has swept through
Britain’s nationalised universities in the glow of having seen off tobacco.

In the bad old days, when British universities were
independent and consuming more than their share of Nobel prizes, they were awash
with alcohol. Now they are awash with documents detailing alcohol policy.

The article continued:

Dr John Townend, the project supervisor (What, there were
more than one of them?) and a consultant cardiologist at University Hospital, Birmingham,
said: “Awareness of DVT is high and many passengers are trying to minimise the
risk — however, there is a discrepancy between knowledge and action.

“An alcohol limit could be introduced or the free alcohol, which
is offered on every flight with BA, could be withdrawn. Several passengers
commented that although they knew to reduce their alcohol intake, they did not
because it was free and made the flight more enjoyable.”

However, no individual airline is likely to risk losing a
competitive edge by banning booze. Such a move is likely to need government
legislation.

So, there we have it. A pseudo research project, based on a
media scare, that did not have anything to do with the real disease or the
identification of causes, or anything else real for that matter, followed by the
inevitable progression to a call for draconian Government action to limit the
public’s right to do anything that meets with PC disapproval. It is the sort
of thing that gives non sequiturs a bad name.

WHO is sick?

Hope you did not miss the inevitable intrusion of the WHO
into the above fable. As ever, Steve Milloy comes up with a timely comment on Fox
News:

The World Health Organization reported last week that
5,500 children die every day from consumption of food and water contaminated
with bacteria.

So why is the WHO worrying about obesity, French fries,
cell phones, "economy class syndrome" and — worst of all —
augmenting its own bureaucratic sprawl?

..................

Oh no, not again!

Just when we thought that another silly little Swedish
scare had come and gone, this happened:

This is not just your ordinary Swedish rubbish. This is
genuine British rubbish, a completely different kettle of fishiness. It is,
however, all based on the same concentration fallacy and those damned
tumour-prone rats.

Number Watch confidently predicts that it will
all be completely ignored by the public at large, who seem to have developed a
remarkable blend of detachment and commonsense about all these foolish food alarums
and excursions, so they will carry on consuming the products they always have.
Journalists and “the scientists”, on the other hand, inhabit a different
world of fantasy.

Imagine the scene at a secret British laboratory. All is
calm, and white-coated workers go quietly about their daily tasks. Suddenly the
harsh sound of the klaxon fills the corridors. Over the loudspeakers comes the
call to action – Bandwagon Alert! Bandwagon Alert! Immediately all is
turmoil and the formerly serene corridors are teaming like a disturbed ants
nest. Senior staff rush to the briefing room, where the Director is already at
the podium waiting to address them.

“Those damned Swedes have beaten us to a major scare. We
have to mount a damage limitation exercise. Jones, warm up the mass
spectrometer. Smith, get the decks cleared in the press release section. Brown,
send some of the girls out to the supermarkets and fish and chip shops to get
samples.”

Meanwhile, at the offices of the Daily Express
everyone is milling about, trying to get the morning edition ready, when
suddenly there is that momentous cry “Hold the front page! Major scare coming
in.”

The giant presses grind to a halt. All the flurry is
instantly frozen. Groups of men lounge about, trying not to betray the tension
inside them.There is an unearthly
hush, broken only by someone playing Lili Marlene on a mouth organ. Someone
drops a spanner and everyone jumps out of their skin, but the deadening silence
is quickly restored. Suddenly the harsh ring of a telephone. A sub editor walks
in, unsuccessfully trying to maintain a calm demeanour, then shouts “Scramble!
Scramble!" He strolls with studied casualness over to the bench where
the Editor is sitting and bends to whisper in his ear. "I'm afraid, Sir, It’s crisps and chips this time!”“My God!”says the
Editor “This is the Big One! Green, warm up the hyperbole polishers. Allan,
ready the precautionary principle packers. Walters, round up the usual suspects,The Food Standards Agency, Health and Safety Executive, Consumers
Association, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, World Health Organisation; in
fact anyone good for a scary quote. Now move! Move!”

And they all lived happily ever after.

Shock Horror!

Exclusive report!

The Number Watch team of intrepid reporters has
revealed a scandal that will scare the pants off you. Every newspaper in Britain
covered the discovery of acrylamide in crisps and chips, none of them
questioning the science behind the scare, but now Number Watch can reveal
the story that they did not dare tell you. Acrylamide is explosive! The
information was easy to find, you only have to look up the safety
data. Why have you not been told this? Are the Government hoping that their
policies will have removed the danger before there is a major incident? Well
that won’t wash. They are only closing rural pubs at a rate of one a day and
have barely touched the urban ones. Meanwhile, innocent drinkers (if there is
such a thing in the world of PC) are not only at risk from passive chipping,
they are in danger of having their heads blown off. The flash point of this
deadly substance is a mere 84°C.
This is 16°C
less than the lowest temperature commonly used for cooking, so housepersons are
in imminent danger as soon as they put a packet of oven-ready chips on to heat.

In the face of Government inertia, the Number Watch
sponsored Phlogiston Research Unit at the Metropolitan University of
Nether Wallop is preparing a multimillion-pound research grant application
to investigate the dangers. It is up to you, the public, to ensure that it goes
through.

For Peat’s Sake!

(Contributed by Prof David Baron)

Just watched a BBC2 program about the Chelsea Flower Show. Seems that in
future, entrants will be disqualified if they use peat, or peat-based compost.

The environmental SIFs who want to ban peat from British gardens should
go to Ireland. At Shannon Bridge they will see the power station that produces
much of the country's electricity.

It is fired exclusively by peat.

Now I'm not sure how much peat British gardeners use in a year,but I bet it isn't more than a few days' consumption by the powerstation.

Situated
on the banks of the river Shannon, sixteen miles south of Athlone and close to
the historic centre of Clonfert and five miles from Clonmacnois, Shannonbridge
is the largest ESB peat station in the country.

The four other peat stations are situated at Rhode and Ferbane in Co. Offaly, at
Lanesboro in Co. Longford and at Bellacorrick in Co. Mayo. Between them, the
five peat stations produce enough electricity to meet almost 15 percent of the
country's electricity requirements.

Paleface speak with forked tongue

When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what
thy right hand doeth.
Matthew

Your bending author has made clear his view that Britain is
suffering under the worst Government ever, and it is no consolation that it is
sustained by the weakest opposition ever. One of the worst of its defects is the
high rate of making promises contrasted with the low rate of fulfilling them.
One of the promises was to give us joined up government; yet, as we saw with
compost heaps, more often than not one part of government seems to be
undermining the efforts of another part. Of course, you can always rely on the
Treasury to find little ways of impeding progress. They have done so recently
with a change in the accounting rules that will mean savage cuts in some of the
more basic sciences, such as taxonomy. It does not help that large chunks of the
money allocated to the so-called environmental sciences are being hived off to
fund politically correct fantasies such as the Global Warming myth.

On
the day that the Great Leader chose to speak out in support of science, Times
2 (May 23rd) had a special feature on the parlous state of just
one science, taxonomy.It is not
alone in experiencing funding problems, but its decline over a decade from
hundreds of scientists to a few dozen has been quite spectacular. The Times
headline Squandering Darwins’s legacy seems to be particularly
apposite.

To make it worse, the PM will shortly be flying off to
Johannesburg for a junket known as the World Summit on Sustainable Development,
where he will, no doubt, harangue developing countries to do more in support of
conservation. It is all part of the longstanding political convention of
DAISNAID(Do as I say, not as I
do).

Another of the many areas in which the Government is
destructively facing both ways is in clinical medicine. One part of the
Government is promising a spectacular increase in the number of medical
graduates, while another is causing a mass destruction of academic posts in the
very same field. It all arises from the obsessions of the educational
establishment with targets, league tables and bibliometry. In their sublime
ignorance and arrogance they did not appreciate that clinicians tend not to
write many papers. Too late, they discovered their error but had then spent the
diminishing pool of funds.

Talking of DAISNAID, it is often accompanied by that other
political convention PUTLIAR (Pull up the ladder I’m all right). The new
draconian "environmental" tax on business drivers, for example, does
not apply to Government ministers "as they have a difficult and demanding
job to do." MPs have just awarded themselves one of the most generous
pension schemes in existence, in addition to the spectacular series of pay
increases they have enjoyed, all at the expense of the ordinary taxpayer, of
course.

This bit of typical political self-serving is even more
unpalatable than most, since MPs have stood by while the pension hopes of most
Britons have been dashed. It all began with the Chancer of the Exchequer and one
of his earliest and shabbiest stealth taxes, in which he raided pension funds
for five billion pounds a year. Until then it had been a convention that
pensions were not double taxed. You paid tax on the pension, but not on the
investment. Most of his other stealth taxes fell on industry, while it was in
the throws of what we are not supposed to call a recession; so the return on
investment was reduced even further.The
net result is that pension funds are in disarray. Companies, sensing that the
Government does not really care about pensions, have been quick to abandon final
salary schemes and replace them with a fixed contribution gamble. Now there are
calls for the pensionable age to be raised to seventy, when ageism in industry
makes it difficult to get a job at fifty.

One of the measures of the quality of a society is how it
looks after its more vulnerable members, and indeed pays due respect to its
elders. The condition of the elderly in Britain is now worse than it has ever
been since the foundation of the welfare state (The old age pension was
introduced in 1908).Most people who move in ordinary society don’t need
numbers; they know of many cases of personal tragedy. Anyway, at the end of a
long article detailing the sorry state of affairs The Times gave some
numbers (we refrain from arguing about the definition of poverty):

And it is getting worse

·Almost
2.5 million old people in the UK live below the poverty line.
·More
than 180,000 old people are physically abused in their homes every year.
·Ten
care homes close every week.
·Last
year more than 12,000 care beds were lost.
·Every
24 seconds an old person falls victim to crime.
·The
decomposing bodies of 1,000 old people are found in their homes every
month.
·More
than 21,000 old people are living in hostels for the homeless.

Of course, the Chancer of the Exchequer, being unlike his
leader a good socialist, likes nothing better than locking up a substantial
proportion of the population in a means-tested benefits bondage. Old people now
find their dignity surrendered to a welter of forms and intrusions. Many of them
are threatened by the Inland Revenue if they cannot cope with the impossible
self assessment forms. Others forgo their benefits entitlement rather than get
locked into a bureaucratic nightmare, which adds advantage to the Treasury, who
weep crocodile tears while they pocket the money. As The Times says, it
is getting worse. The present generation of workers are finding the prospects of
a comfortable retirement receding into the distance. It is a great shame for, as
this author, who as a young man dreaded it, can attest, retirement is wonderful.
All the clichés that retirees come out with (such as there not being enough
time in the day) are absolutely true. If your bending author had not taken early
retirement he would still be mindlessly filling in forms for bureaucrats,
instead of enjoying creating mischief with disreputable books and web
pages, as well as being self sufficient in vegetables and all sorts of other
other real activities.

For an increasing proportion of the population, however,
retirement is a pitiful conclusion to a hard life. The Nanny State keeps telling
them that if they give up everything enjoyable they can live practically for
ever. Oh yeah?

Which all leads nicely to the next day's story:

A matter of life and death

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth

At last someone (the Office of National Statistics) has
published the
statistics that people really want to know, not just life expectancy, but
healthy-life expectancy. It is one of those areas where ordinary people show a
lot more common sense than all the health gurus and Nanny State apparatchiks.
People in pubs commonly comment on the latest health nagging “But I don’t
want a long life, I just want to retain a bit of dignity as long as possible.”
The attitude of the Nanny State has been “You will live longer whether
you want to or not.” The statistics were gathered to enable ministers to
apportion health funding, but they told us more than the new Puritans wanted us
to know.

Of course the media seized upon the newsy bit, which was
regional variations. People in the South of England have a both longer life and
longer healthy-life than those in the North; so that is what made all the
headlines. Most intelligent observers will be unsurprised by this (see, for
example, the piece Policemen can be bad for your health in Sorry,
wrong number!).

The crucial information was, on the whole, lost in the
small print. An ONS spokesperson said: "Healthy life expectancy in England
is increasing, but not by as much as life expectancy. People can expect to live
more years in 'not good' health." Many people (this author included) have
had the experience of parents who lived longer than they wanted to. This is why
much of the “be miserable and live longer” propaganda is received with such
cynicism. If it is your wish to go in for self-flagellation and living by the
modern Ten Commandments, all well and good,
but if you wish to enjoy the good things in your life, you should be entitled to
without being harangued by the do-gooders who believe you have a duty to hang on
to the bitter end. The very State that urges you to live as long as possible
also, by neglect, acts to ensure that those extra years will be as painful and
undignified as possible.

The media have been full of stories recently about
desperately ill people requesting the right to die with dignity, a request that
is routinely refused by the judiciary. Medics routinely ignore the second half
of the updated first commandment – Thou shalt not kill, but needst not
strive officiously to keep alive. A figure in the pop world observed, on
being told that each cigarette would take five minutes off his life, "So
what? It's five minutes off the end."

The BBC version notes – Overall, the average life
expectancy across England is 77.5 years, meaning that on average a person can
expect to suffer 9.2 years of ill health at the end of their life. So we have a
rather sombre